


Where's the Fire?

by SingingInTheRaiin



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fix It Fic, Gen, Timey-Wimey, breaking the rules is what they do, breaking the rules of time, the Doctor is a bit of an idiot sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 05:49:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20501939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingingInTheRaiin/pseuds/SingingInTheRaiin
Summary: The TARDIS brings the Doctor back to Rose, at a time when she's not too happy with his tenth self. But if he can whisk her away onto all kinds of adventures, then maybe he'll be able to convince her not to leave him any sooner than she has to?





	Where's the Fire?

“Doctor, you said that we’d be going to New York. You promised me a shopping trip, remember? And where are we? Right in the middle of London! Probably the most boring place in the universe!”

The Doctor was too caught up by the coordinates on his screen to pay much attention to Clara’s words, and just nodded distractedly in response. Even after hundreds of years, he could still immediately recognize the coordinates of the Powell Estate, 21st century London. But why would the TARDIS bring him here of all places? He’d been to this place so many times before that there was far too big a risk of him crossing his own timeline.

“-Doctor? Doctor! Are you even listening to me?” 

The Doctor had seen the exact date- Rose’s birthday, 2007. It was before Canary Wharf, before they’d been separated. At least, it was before they’d been forcibly separated. He could still remember how stupid he’d been back then, pushing Rose away because he’d been so scared of losing her. Fat lot of good that had done for either of them.

Rose’s birthday had happened so shortly after everything with Reinette, and he remembered her requesting that he drop her off at home for at least a couple of weeks. He hadn’t wanted to continue traveling without her, so he’d just skipped ahead until it was time to pick her up, and… well. He couldn’t remember the specific details of what happened after that, he only knew that Rose and Mickey had gone back with him and moved on to their next adventure. 

The Doctor relaxed as he realized what that meant. With his impeccable memory, the only reason he could think of for forgetting any of his precious time with Rose would be if he’d encountered his future self, and needed to block the memories to preserve the timelines. Which meant that he was supposed to be here because he already had been. And there was still a couple of weeks until his previous self would return for Rose, so did that mean the TARDIS had brought him here to spend time with Rose while he could?

“Doctor, seriously-!”

It was difficult to decide whether that was a gift or a curse, all things considered. Of course he wanted to see Rose again, but it had been so long, and he’d been doing an excellent job of moving forward with his life- or at the very least, shoving down all of his hurt feelings and pretended like nothing had ever happened. And he also knew that his other self would return, which meant that he had such a limited time with her, and having to say goodbye to her again would hurt.

But before he could decide to leave, for the sake of his own sanity if nothing else, he heard the familiar sound of a key being inserted, and then the TARDIS door popped open, and he watched with wide eyes as Rose Tyler stepped onto his ship again. 

“Doctor, what are you doing here? I thought I told that I didn’t want…” Rose trailed off, clearly taking in the sight of the console room, along with the Doctor himself, and Clara who was leaning back against the railing, arms crossed over her chest. The Doctor just wished that Rose would keep talking. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to get enough of hearing her beautiful, familiar voice. But she’d always been rather brilliant, and she gave him a long look. “Did you… how long has it been since you dropped me off?” she asked in a small voice. 

The Doctor blinked once before he realized why she was suddenly upset. Here he was with a new face, a new looking TARDIS, and a new companion, when Rose probably thought that he’d just been planning on skipping right to picking her up. He quickly shook his head. “It’s not what you’re thinking, Rose. I’m from a lot further in the future than your current Doctor.”

She frowned. “Where am I?”

The Doctor had to refrain from swearing under his breath. Of course Rose would notice that she wasn’t around in the future. Why the hell had the damn TARDIS thought that it would be a good idea to bring him here? Before he could think of a believable story about where Rose was in the future, she was already making her way over to Clara, who’d been standing by awkwardly, holding out her hand. “Hello, I’m Rose.”

Clara easily accepted the handshake. “Clara.” 

Rose laughed, and the Doctor was distracted by what a lovely sound it was. “I know this must come as a bit of a shock to you. He doesn’t really like to talk about his previous companions. I already learned that the hard way.” But the look in her eyes did not match the light amusement in her voice. If Clara was the Doctor’s companion, and she didn’t know Rose, then obviously she wasn’t around anymore. Of course Rose would be smart enough to figure that out. 

Rose looked back at the Doctor, and he could see the way that her eyes flicked over him, taking in every detail. She wasn’t sure if she would ever see this version of him again- and of course, the Doctor already knew that she wouldn’t. He hadn’t even expected her to see this version of him at all, but the TARDIS always brought him to where he needed to be, so even though he couldn’t see it yet, he knew that there had to be a reason for all of this.

“Bowtie and suspenders, huh? Trying to act more your age these days?”

The Doctor grinned. “Oi, I’ll have you know that bowties are quite cool.”

Rose rolled her eyes, and then took a small step towards the doors. “Well, I know that it’s never a good thing to know too much about one’s future, so I’ll just be on my way.” 

“Wait!” the Doctor called out before he could even think about it. For Rose, even though she was upset with him, she’d just seen her Doctor a few days ago and would be seeing him again soon. But for the Doctor- this Doctor- this would be his only chance. “I know that I can’t just whisk you away and create some kind of paradox, but surely it would be alright for you to go on a small adventure?” He tried not to think about just how desperate he sounded. He was pretty sure that Rose could see right through him anyways. 

There was a strange look in Rose’s eyes, but then she smiled and the Doctor found himself having some difficulty breathing despite his respiratory bypass. It took him a long moment to even remember what he’d just asked. “Doctor, are you sure that that wouldn’t cause any problems? I don’t know how long it’s been for you, and I’m not going to ask, but I still remember the Reapers that came last time one of us tried to change time.”

The Doctor shook his head. “We wouldn’t be changing time. Not as long as I got you back here before the younger me shows up, right?”

Rose kept looking at him, and he wondered suddenly what she thought of this new face of his. Did she like it? Did she find the chin too distracting, or the face too young, or the hair too floppy? But then she nodded once, and the Doctor rushed forward to pull her into a tight hug. “Excellent!”

He only pulled himself away from Rose when he heard the sound of Clara clearing her throat somewhere behind him, and while he didn’t exactly feel embarrassed, he did know that he needed to ‘chill out’. “Doctor, can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?”

The Doctor glanced back at Clara nervously. They were very good friends, which is why he was pretty sure that she was going to find some reason to yell at him for all of this. And if this was the last time that he would ever be able to spend with Rose, then he wanted to make every second of it count. “Not now, Clara,” he said in as gentle a voice as possible, not wanting her to think that he was angry with her for any reason. Then he looked back at Rose, a big grin on his face when he saw the grin she was wearing. “So, where to, Miss Tyler?”

Rose tilted her head to the side as she thought about it for a moment. “Well, I don’t know if it’s any good or not, but you did tell me with two different mouths already that you were going to take me to Barcelona. The planet, not the city.”

“Where the dogs don’t have noses!” the Doctor laughed. He rushed over to the console, and started pressing buttons and flipping switches. Once they had dematerialized, the Doctor turned to look at Rose, and found that she was suddenly much closer to him than she had been a few seconds ago. She slipped her hand into his, without any hesitation, and the Doctor felt a wave of relief wash over him when he realized that even now, their hands seemed to fit together perfectly. 

He felt a bit bad about pretty much ignoring Clara, though in his defense it was hard to remember anything else when Rose was right next to him, giving him that tongue-in-teeth smile that he had missed so much. And Clara had his full attention all the rest of the time. Wasn’t it only fair that she let him have his moment with Rose. 

They spent the evening on Barcelona, the planet, and then the Doctor took them to Barcelona the city, specifically in the 32nd century, when it was considered by many historians to be at its most beautiful. After that, he could tell how tired Rose was, but he desperately didn’t want to bring her back, not just yet. She seemed to sense that, and gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “Why don’t you let Clara and I get some rest- I know, I know, useless apes spend too much of our lives sleeping- and then we can keep going tomorrow? Like you said, it’s fine as long as you bring me back before the other Doctor shows up, right? Well, we can’t do anything that would result in me getting injured, and we can’t stick around long enough for me to start visibly aging, but that doesn’t mean I have to go home right this instant.”

The Doctor might not have noticed if he wasn’t paying so much attention to Rose (and why hadn’t he ever paid this much attention before, when he’d had the chance?), but he could see more than just tiredness in her eyes. There was a reluctance in them as well, and then it hit him that she didn’t want to go home yet. She didn’t want to go back to pinstripes yet. “Rose… about everything with Reinette…” even now, he was no good when it came to talking about feelings, but for Rose, he could at least try. 

Rose suddenly pulled her hand away, and the Doctor had to resist the urge to cry out at the loss. “I don’t really want to talk about it, Doctor.”

He remembered that they’d never talked about it after he’d picked her up again. But that seemed like a mistake. Sure, his human clone had presumably told Rose a million times over how much he loved her, but she’d never heard it from him, and it didn’t seem right for there to be a universe where Rose didn’t know how much she was loved. “It was just a stupid mistake, and I didn’t handle anything right, and I should have never made you wait even five and a half hours-”

Rose sighed, and then interrupted in a soft voice. “I lied. I felt so hurt that you just abandoned us there, Doctor. You knew that we wouldn’t be able to get home without you, unless you wanted me to open the TARDIS again, though I highly doubt that. To have it all happen so soon after everything with Sarah Jane, it just felt like maybe you didn’t want me around anymore.”

The Doctor frowned, and wasn’t sure if he actually wanted to ask or not. But his words came out before he could stop him, just as they so often did. “How long did you wait?”

“Two days, about. We slept and ate on the TARDIS, and I tried to figure out if there was some way to bring her back to France so that we could get you, but of course neither of us actually know how to fly this thing. And then you got back, looking so cheerful, I didn’t want to take that away from you.”

The Doctor wanted to reach for Rose’s hand again, but wasn’t sure if she’d let him. “I’m so sorry, Rose. I should never have left you for that long. Or at all. I was such an idiot.”

Rose shrugged, and avoided meeting his eyes. “I was actually… I wasn’t sure if I was going to go back with him or not. I asked for a couple of weeks with my Mum so that I would have plenty of time to really think about it.”

That caught the Doctor by surprise. He’d never had any idea that Rose had thought about leaving him, and it made his hearts clench in his chest. Though as much as it hurt, for a moment he couldn’t help considering just pushing her to stay at home. To never get trapped in a place where he wouldn’t be able to see her anymore. But no, he already had learned his lesson about messing with fixed points, and Canary Wharf was fixed. As well as the events on a few different planets that he and Rose would go to in her future. And besides, he didn’t want to give up the precious memories that he had of their time together, short as it may have been.

“Please don’t leave,” he whispered.

Rose gave him a very long look, and then gave the slightest nod. “Alright, I won’t.” She smiled at him, and even though it wasn’t one of her usual blindingly bright ones, it was still brilliant. “I’m glad you showed up. Reminded me of all the fun parts of traveling with you. And… I wasn’t sure that you’d ask me to stay, if I did decide to leave,” she admitted.

“I’d ask you to stay a million times over if I thought it would mean keeping you with me, Rose Tyler.”

Her smile grew at that, and there was also a pink blush on her cheeks. “Yeah, well.” She suddenly lunged forward and threw her arms around the Doctor’s neck to pull him into a hug, and then kissed his cheek (and he absolutely did not notice how adorable it was that she had to stand on her tiptoes to do so). “I’ll see you in the morning, Doctor.”

“There are no mornings on the TARDIS,” he mumbled in response, though he was too busy focusing on the feeling of her in his arms to pay much attention to his own words.

She laughed. “Then I won’t see you?”

“Well, I suppose if there would be an exception made for anyone, it would be you.”

,,,

They went on several more adventures together, and the Doctor could see Clara grow more worried as time passed, even though he could also see her and Rose getting along better and better each day. He wasn’t sure why, but it felt important to him that they liked each other. One of his best friends and his… well. Whatever Rose was to him. His everything. 

After about a month had passed, full of a whirlwind of adventure after adventure, the Doctor found himself in the library, grabbing books off of shelves and tossing them over his shoulder when they didn’t seem like something he wanted to read at the moment. When he tossed the next book, it didn’t land on the floor with the same thud as the others, and he turned around to investigate.

Rose was standing there, holding the book in her hands. “Not in the mood for the Palaforian Farmer’s Almanac of 6098?”

“Well, not as such…” he trailed off when he saw the serious look on Rose’s face. “What’s wrong?”

She sighed, and reached past him to put the book back in its proper place on the shelf, and the Doctor tried not to enjoy the feeling of her burning heat of her arm against his too much. “Nothing’s wrong, Doctor. I just…” she reached up to twirl a strand of hair around her finger. “I think it’s time for me to go home,” she said softly. “Don’t get me wrong, traveling with you has been absolutely fantastic. But I’m ready to go back to my life, in its proper order.”

The Doctor sighed as well, and reached up to gently touch Rose’s cheek. He knew that she was right, but that didn’t make it any better. “I don’t want to let you go,” he admitted. “I know it’s selfish, but I just miss you so much, Rose.”

“You’ll still have me,” she promised. She reached up to press her hand flat against his chest, right in the center of his two hearts. “I’ll be there, right? And up here, too.” She reached up to lightly tap the side of his head. “I don’t want to go either. Ever, I mean. I know you can’t tell me, but I know that something must happen to me in the future, because I would never willingly leave you. But hiding here, with this you, won’t fix things. Not really. I have to go back.”

The Doctor nodded, and then pulled Rose into a tight hug, crushing her to him. They stayed there like that for who knows how long (four minutes, thirty-eight seconds, and three-tenths) before finally separating, and then they walked to the console room hand in hand. The Doctor set the coordinates to drop her off just after he’d picked her up, and then slowly walked over to the doors, not wanting to let go. “Let me walk you home?”

Rose smiled. “I’d like that.” They both walked as slowly as possible, as if that could somehow delay the inevitable, and then they were standing just outside her door. Rose reached up to push back some of the Doctor’s hair, even though he already knew from experience that there wasn’t much to be done to tame it. She gave him a searching look, and then a small smile. “Doctor, I know I’ve never said it out loud before, but… I love you.” Then she gave him a chaste kiss on the lips before pulling away.

He stared at her, stunned. He wanted so badly to say it back, but he couldn’t. What if she refused to go with the metacrisis because she’d already heard his Time Lord self say those words? “Rose Tyler…” then he leaned forward and met her for another kiss, this one much more passionate. When he finally pulled back, her face was flushed and she was breathless, and the Doctor knew he’d be in the same state if it weren’t for his respiratory bypass. “Rose, you know that you can’t talk about any of this with my younger self, right?”

She nodded. “I know. I promise that I won’t bring about the end of time.” She gave his hands one last squeeze, and then he left, knowing that if he didn’t tear himself away right then, he might never be able to.

It wasn’t until he was back on the TARDIS and had taken them back to the vortex that he let out a gasp as he was struck by a flood of new memories. He had apparently landed poorly, and dropped Rose off just minutes before his younger self arrived for her. He remembered seeing her snog someone he didn’t recognize at the time, and felt insanely jealous. When he’d asked who it was, she’d only laughed at him, and then surprised them both by kissing his pinstripes self. 

Rose had gotten back on the TARDIS, this time without Mickey, who’d claimed that the two of them were too sickening together to watch, and that he didn’t want to be a third wheel on their ‘honeymoon’. They still wound up in Pete’s world, but Rose hadn’t pushed to meet her parallel father, instead content to spend the day strolling around the city with the Doctor and laughing as they pointed out the differences. They’d still stopped the Cybermen with the help of familiar faces, and then returned to their proper universe.

The rest of their adventures had gone much the same as they had originally, only with even more hand-holding, and hugs, and of course, kissing. When it came to Canary Wharf, the Doctor didn’t try to send Rose away at all, because he’d already promised by then that there would never be a repeat of the Game Station, no matter how much the Doctor wished to protect her.

Rose had pulled out rope from who knows where, and they’d tied themselves together, so when she fell, the Doctor was able to keep hold of his clamp and keep Rose out of the void, long enough for the opening to close and for them to both collapse to the floor. He’d berated her for her recklessness in letting go of the clamp, but knew that it had been necessary, and was also just glad that she was with him, and safe. 

Things after that had gone mostly the same as before. He’d still met Martha, though she hadn’t traveled with him because he’d clearly been too caught up in Rose at the time still, and he’d still gotten Donna, who still became one of his best friends. 

The stars had still gone out, and Jackie Tyler and Rickey Smith had come to help against the Daleks. The metacrisis was still made, and Donna was still lost to him. The metacrisis had chosen to go to Pete’s world when he realized that he couldn’t have Rose, saying that every universe needed a Doctor in it. 

He still found Amy and Rory, and River Song had still been sprinkled throughout his timeline, though this time as a friend, not a wife. Which made him wonder how she’d known his name, but that was a question for another time. He still met Clara and had all kinds of brilliant adventures with her.

There were so many new memories to sort through, and to try and reconcile with the previous versions of them. But once he’d gotten the gist of everything that had happened since he’d brought Rose home, a new thought suddenly struck the Doctor. He suddenly raced out of the console room, ignoring Clara’s confused shouts coming from somewhere behind him.

He ran to his bedroom- no, _their_ bedroom- and shoved the door open, and then stood there, staring like an idiot. Rose was lying on his- _their_\- bed, resting peacefully, or at least she had been. The sound of the door slamming into the wall seemed enough to startle her away, and she sat up, looking at him with one eyebrow raised. “What exciting thing have you woken me up over now?”

She sounded cranky and tired and her hair was a mess and there were a few creases in her cheek from where it had been resting against the pillow and she was the most gorgeous sight the Doctor had ever seen. He walked over to her slowly, slightly worried that she would just disappear if he got too close. He knelt down on the edge of the bed, and reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

“How did you know to bring rope?” He knew that it was probably a dumb question, considering how long ago it had been for both of them since Canary Wharf. But even though he could remember the new timeline as easily as anything else, he could still remember, in great detail, what it had felt like to lose Rose forever, once to an accident and once to his own stubbornness.

Rose blinked a few times, then reached up to rub tiredly at her eyes before looking at him again. “What rope?”

“Canary Wharf.”

Rose blinked again, and then there was a sheepish look on her face. “Ah. You know, I’m a bit surprised that it’s taken you this long to ask about it.” He just kept staring at her, and Rose cleared her throat. “I’m not exactly sure how changing time works, and I know that I’m not the person who should be given the chance to do something so drastic, so I’m not going to make you promise not to be mad at me, or anything. But, well, I don’t know if you’ll remember, or if it will ever happen, but you came to visit me at one point, with this face, back when I was still traveling around with pinstripes. And you acted like you’d seen a ghost when you saw me, so I knew something was going to happen. And I was just going to let it go, I swear, but then Clara told me that she’d never seen you as happy as you were with me, so I selfishly asked the TARDIS what happened, and she wouldn’t give me a specific date or time, so I just started carrying around rope everywhere.”

The Doctor furrowed his eyebrows. “But how can any of this be possible? You should have created a massive paradox. If I never lost you at Canary Wharf, and then again later on, I never would have been so eager to get you onboard again, and you wouldn’t have gotten the information needed to change things and-”

Rose leaned forward to press her hand flat over the Doctor’s mouth. “You aren’t the one who chose to go back to see me in the past, right? It was the TARDIS? And she could’ve done that in any version of events. She’s clever like that. And she also wouldn’t have told me anything if my knowing could have ruined everything, right? I just… I remember how you looked when I first told you I love you. And I couldn’t leave you behind. Not after I promised you forever.” Then she pulled her hand away from the Doctor’s mouth. “And what did you mean by ‘again later on’?”

The Doctor was still trying to process what had happened, so his big mouth got going before he could give it much thought. “In the original timeline, after the Dalek Crucible, I left you in Pete’s world with the metacrisis so that you could have matching human lives together.”

Rose’s eyes widened. “Oh.” Once the Doctor realized how honest he’d just been, he waited for her to get angry with him for abandoning her, but instead, there was a strangely sympathetic look on her face, and she reached out to take both of his hands in hers. “I think I know why the TARDIS helped me change things, love.” And even though her tone was serious, hearing her say ‘love’ to him, not just in a memory, was thoroughly distracting in all the best ways. But then he focused back on her, because there was clearly something she wanted to tell him. “How long have we been traveling together?” she asked suddenly.

The Doctor felt thrown by the sudden change in topic, and he tilted his head to the side as he thought about it. His timesense wasn’t filling in an answer for him the way it usually would when someone asked something along those lines. “I’m not sure. A few years, at least. It can be difficult to keep track in a time machine, can’t it?”

Rose smiled, and squeezed his hands. “I’ve been keeping track. Since the moment you first grabbed my hand and told me to run, it’s been nearly four hundred years.”

The Doctor frowned and immediately shook his head. “What? No. That’s impossible, Rose.” He pulled one of his hands away to press against her forehead, testing to see if she had some kind of fever that would make her talk nonsense. “You’re a human, Rose,” he reminded her, as if she could somehow forget something so crucial. “Even with the future technologies that extend human lifespans, none of them would work for quite that long. And certainly none of them would keep you looking so young for that long.”

Rose reached up to pull the Doctor’s hand away from her face, though she didn’t let go, and he could feel her touch burning his wrist, and he never wanted her to let go of him. “It’s not because of any human technology. I know it was a long time ago, but surely you must remember when I looked into the heart of the TARDIS?” He nodded numbly, unsure of where Rose was going with this. “Well it changed me. I’m still human- mostly- but with a little bit of extra. When’s the last time you remember me getting hurt?”

The Doctor hated to think about Rose getting hurt, but he thought about anyways, since that’s what she wanted him to do. “I think it was on Harrol VI,” he finally answered. “When you broke your arm.” But then he realized why Rose had asked that question. Even if his timesense wasn’t working at the moment, he knew that hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of adventures had taken place since then.

His jaw dropped, and he found himself gaping at Rose, his beautiful, impossible, wonderful, precious human. “I think that’s why the TARDIS helped me change things. If you left me with a human version of you, then I would have outlived him, and everyone else I love, and then I would have been all alone, stuck in a universe where I could never get back to you, and not having the ability to see timelines means I wouldn’t be able to safely travel the universe without risking anything major being changed for the worse.”

The Doctor quickly searched through all of his new memories, but couldn’t find a single mention of the changes that Rose had gone through. “Why did you never say anything about this?”

Rose laughed, and despite the situation, the Doctor still couldn’t help thinking that it was a beautiful noise, beyond the description of any words. “Doctor, I’ve been with you for almost four hundred years,” she said pointedly, though the Doctor still wasn’t sure he understood her point. The confused look on his face only seemed to serve to make her laugh harder. “Doctor, it’s been four hundred years! How could you have possibly not noticed that I never got hurt or aged? I know you can be daft sometimes, but this seems like a bit much even for you!”

As wonderful as the sound of her laugh was, even if it was at his expense, the Doctor suddenly thought of a brilliant method of silencing her, and decided that he just had to try it out. So he leaned forward to give Rose a deep kiss, and then leaned back after what felt like ages had passed. “Oi, it’s not my fault. It’s your fault for looking so… same-y.” Then they both shifted so that they were sitting upright against the headboard of the bed, shoulders touching. “Rose?”

“Hm?”

The Doctor sighed, and then leaned over to press a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m glad that you changed time.”

She grinned. “Me too.”

Though the peaceful moment between them was ruined a moment later when Clara suddenly burst into the room, and she stopped and put her hands on her hips as soon as she saw the couple. “Doctor! What’s going on? You ran out of the room like there was an emergency, but you didn’t say anything. I was worried.” 

The Doctor gave her a long look. “Were you aware that my wife is four hundred years old?” He wasn’t sure where he got the word wife from, but after a few seconds, he remembered the many different times they’d gone to all different versions of Vegas and gotten married, as well as the time they’d had a small handfasting ceremony in the fields outside of New New York. 

He was quickly dragged out of his thoughts, though, by the sound of Clara’s voice. “Are you kidding me? How did you not know that?”

The Doctor pouted when he realized that both women were laughing at him, and he had several other memories of them ganging up on him, but he wasn’t truly upset. He wouldn’t change any of this for anything.


End file.
